I was horrified to read this, assuming it was the same type of caning used on prisoners that causes severe damage and leaves lifelong scars. But apparently it is a much milder form for students [1]:
> In a much milder form, caning is used as a disciplinary measure in schools. Boys aged between 6 and 19 may be given up to three strokes with a light rattan cane on the buttocks over clothing or the palm of the hand as a punishment for serious misconduct, often as a last resort.
> Based on first-hand accounts, the student typically feels moderate to acute pain for the first few minutes, depending on the number of strokes. This soon leads to a stinging sensation and general soreness around the points of impact, usually lasting for some hours; sitting down is likely to be uncomfortable. Superficial bruises and weals may appear on the buttocks and last for a few days after the punishment.
For comparison, criminals get:
> A report by the Singapore Bar Association stated, "The blows are applied with the full force of the jailer's arm. When the rattan hits the bare buttocks, the skin disintegrates, leaving a white line and then a flow of blood."
> Usually, the buttocks will be covered with blood after three strokes. More profuse bleeding may occur in the case of a larger number of strokes. An eyewitness described that after 24 strokes, the buttocks will be a "bloody mess".
> Men who were caned have variously described the pain they experienced as "unbearable", "excruciating", "equivalent to getting hit by a lorry", "having a hot iron placed on your buttocks", etc. A recipient of 10 strokes said, "The pain was beyond description. If there is a word stronger than excruciating, that should be the word to describe it".
> Most offenders struggle violently after each of the first three strokes and then their struggles lessen as they become weaker. By the time the caning is over, those who receive more than three strokes will be in a state of shock.
> The wounds usually take between a week and a month to heal, depending on the number of strokes received. During this time, offenders cannot sit down or lie down on their backs, and experience difficulties controlling their bowels.
I understand that many people feel that any form of corporal punishment is wrong. But I think it’s still important to point out that this is not the same type of caning that Singapore is (in)famous for internationally. And the BBC article, which also makes reference to judicial caning, makes no attempt to explain the difference - which to me feels rather sensationalist.
Yeah this seems like the kind of punishment that was also common in the west in 1800-1900.
I remember my parents still talking of getting hit with a ruler in the 50s tho the practice was technically forbidden since 1860 or so.
I'm not sure when it was formally banned but my dad talks about boys in his school getting "slippered" and that was in the 60s, so caning was gone but you could still hit kids with slightly less painful objects.
And throwing the heavy wooden blackboard rubber at boys who were goofing around or not listening was also considered completely normal
If they like it so much, they should apply it to all kids, not just boys.
They like it as a punishment for boys exclusively.
I guess hitting girls with sticks makes them uneasy, huh. Maybe they should apply the same empathy to all children.
No its because hitting women with sticks as punishment is illegal in Singapore but its legal to do to men.
Seems like they just get what they did. To be honest, I think it should be less milder.
We have overwhelming evidence that corporal punishment is harmful in general, and very harmful for kids.
As someone that was on the receiving end of that kind of violence due to growing up in a fundamentalist evangelical family, I will not mince words: the view you have expressed is pure evil. I simplly cannot imagine the mentality that kids need to be physically tortured to learn how to behave.
>We have overwhelming evidence that corporal punishment is harmful in general, and very harmful for kids.
This is false. The evidence is not overwhelming; it's actually extremely poor quality. And the research question is one of the most difficult to resolve in social science. I wrote on this here: https://wyclif.substack.com/p/the-academic-literature-on-sma.... See also this guy: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=2HtqmZ0AAA...
There will never be proper studies with control groups to test exactly how harmful beating children is, so this is an unrealistic standard to expect. Given this context, the person you're responding to is correct: we have overwhelming evidence that corporal punishment is harmful in general and very harmful for children.
The point isn't just that we can do RCTs. The point is that the methods used are not even adequate on their own terms. Just as one example, the standard method with longitudinal data would be to throw in individual fixed effects. But they don't do that. Another example: I know of no serious cross-country panel analysis with (say) time and country fixed effects to examine the effect of national spanking bans. There is a cross-country cross-sectional analysis, which is just not adequate to draw any conclusions.
Even if the methods were the best possible given the difficulties, you wouldn't then say this was "overwhelming" evidence. You'd say "the best evidence we've got" and you'd then assume that parents don't know nothing and exercise a bit of humility. (Though to be fair, that argument does not generalise to the Singapore decision-making authorities! Maybe they don't have any deep local knowledge that should lead us to trust their judgment.)
You might not have noticed what you've done here, but you've not only agreed to corporal punishment for children but also for harsher corporal punishment for criminals across the board. Read the whole conversation chain and reflect on how bad the optics are. There is a reason why your stance is unpopular.
"Spanking looks like an 8/10 on the subjective harmful scale, but actually on the objective harmful scale its closer to a 3/10. We must rectify the bad reputation of spanking!" is not the type of motivation that should drive pedagogy research.
If you're saying we should pretend that spanking is worse than (we currently know) it is, then I don't agree.
I haven't said anything about corporal punishment for criminals, and I don't know of any evidence for or against it - that strikes me as a very different argument, partly because the level of violence is likely to be much greater.
Yeah my bad. I was the getting bullied side of students, but the current punishments are something that should be ended.